So anybody try adapting a supercharger to the RL yet?
Anybody know what the drivetrain is rated for?

 

I am also in this same boat. I am waiting for the completion on the TL-S. Once it is a go, you are going to have to find a way so it could fit in the engine bay

 

This car would do very well with a nice 6-7lb setup. Around 380hp I'm thinking. Very nice. Look forward to the progress.

 

hopefully noone blows up their engine in the process....

 

Guess we'll just wait......

 

It will and can be done

 

The bigger question is the tranny & awd system, can they take the additional power?

 

Will that void my warranty?

 

That, indeed, is the $49,000 question.

 

Most likely. Also the increased power will confuse the SH-AWD system and we know Acura's track record with transmissions is not good, so it could be a real problem. Too bad you can't take the 8 speed tranny off the Lexus GS460 or LS460. They are used to 380 HP.

 

I've never had much luck supercharging anything over 9.5:1 compression and I usually target 7:1 to 8.5:1 for a build. I believe the 05-newer RL is 11:1, hence it's appetite for octane. With some extensive tuning that pulls a ton of timing out and running bigger injectors with race gas it might compensate but you'd kill performance and still be limited to a few pounds of boost to avoid detonation. To do properly, you'd want to remove heads and use much thicker head gaskets or even different pistons. If no aftermarkets are available, you might find a machine shop to remove about 10-15cc from the top of the pistons or dish if they had enough meat to work with to begin with. I'm not familiar with the torque capacity of the tranny however I suspect it would hold for awhile but would eventually need upgraded with different clutch packs and hard parts. It might live a little longer if you under drive your supercharger, but that would further reduce power. It would be alot easier and cheaper to throw it on a squirt of laughing gas for the occasional thrill.

 

My last supercharged vehicle was a GS400 (see signature) which had a compression ratio of 10.5:1. No issues what so ever. There are plenty of supercharged IS350s floating around which comes with a compression ratio of 11.8:1 with again no issues. Many factors come into play but it is certainly doable.

 

ok...that's good info. I've never dealt with boosted application running this kind of compression since you can get more boost thus more power with lower compression. I'll have to read up on the details of how they are getting away with this as it goes against conventional wisdom. It sounds promising as many of the newer cars are coming with higher compression. I did have one engine with 10.5:1 that we were able to bleed off some of the cylinder pressure by opening and closing the valves early/late that ran good however we changed the pistons to a lower compression and overdrove the supercharger and it made much better power. Thanks for the info. If you have any tech articles that you can point me to I'd appreciate it so I can read up on this. Thanks.